Decline of Broadway?

[oripnick]

Posted: 10/2/06 at 1:57pm

I'm working on a piece for my journalism class, and I was hoping you might help me by providing some feedback--

I've noticed (as I'm sure you have) a startling trend that Broadway is on the decline. There are fewer new productions going up (more revivals), and the financial grosses for shows have been steadily declining over the last year or so.

Do you have any thoughts as to why this might be happening? What effects do you think this will have on Broadway? On performers? On producers? What do you think needs to be done to change this trend? What changes have you seen on Broadway in the last year(s)?

Really, it's pretty open-ended. I would be very appreciative on any thoughts you have on the 'decline of Broadway...' I'm a Broadway baby born and raised, so I feel this is a really important trend to track and write about!

Thanks so very much, and I'm looking forward to hearing your comments!

[hannahshule]

Posted: 10/2/06 at 2:59pm

Tommy Tune put it best, "Broadway's like an old hooker. Past it's prime, but keeps putting out while it still can."

But really, there's been a drought of originality and inventivness. Everything's too reliant on special effects, and if you want my opinion, the charcters aren't interesting anymore. And everything's based on movies. And don't forget stunt casting.
That's my take, which are some of the reasons I've been turned off on Boradway a bit in the last couple of years.

Updated On: 10/2/06 at 02:59 PM

[Becky2]

Posted: 10/2/06 at 10:47pm

I think a lot of people are afraid to take risks. They want to produce something that is more likely to be secure financially.

Also, I think a lot of people have been hypnotized by television so much that they don't know how to appreciate some of the more subtle but wonderful aspects of theater.

[Pasty]

Posted: 10/3/06 at 8:56am

I think the dissapearance of the overture has something to do with it. The nytimes has a nice article about it.http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/theater/01gree.html?_r=1&ex=1159761600&en=01668721dab90324&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin

[Taryn2]

Posted: 10/10/06 at 1:32pm

You have to be registered to see the article. any chance you can copy and paste for us?

I think with the increase in cable and sattelite dishes in the home, interest in both literature and the fine arts is rapidly decreasing. People would settle on the couch for a night of television than a night at the theatre.

After all, a large percentage of broadway musicals is based on movies. and why go see the show when you can just pop it in the dvd player?

I wonder if it has anyhting to do with how we see broadway shows now. Going to see a show used to be an event; you were supposed to dress up and be polite. Now when I see a show people run around like they're at the zoo.

they could be completely unconnected, they're just two things that both bother me...

[My Fair Lady]

Posted: 10/10/06 at 7:56pm

Here's the article!

THEATER; Whatever Happened to the Overture?
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By JESSE GREEN
Published: October 1, 2006
WHO could forget the great overture to 'A Chorus Line'? First there's that infectious hop-step vamp from the song 'One.' Then come some of the show's most familiar melodies: 'I Hope I Get It,' 'Nothing,' 'What I Did for Love.' Finally the orchestra swings back for a rousing half-chorus of 'One' that would make even gouty musical-theater-phobes want to leap to their feet with excitement.

Oh, wait -- 'A Chorus Line' doesn't have an overture. At least not one you'll hear at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater when the $8 million revival opens on Thursday.

Back in 1975, a month before the original production's debut, Marvin Hamlisch did write a 'Chorus Line' overture like the one described. But the director, Michael Bennett, and the show's other creators decided not to include it, fearing it would destroy the illusion that the audience was watching an actual audition as the lights went up. Instead a lone rehearsal piano banged out the dance routines, while the rest of the orchestra, which began playing later, was masked in the pit by a big black scrim.

Thanks in part to 'A Chorus Line,' the Broadway orchestra and the Broadway overture would rarely emerge from that obscurity again. The 'Chorus Line' revival's 17-piece ensemble is not even in the pit this time; it's in a room backstage, hooked up to the sound system. And traditional overtures -- several minutes long, made up of melodies heard later in the show and played by an orchestra before the curtain goes up -- are similarly disappearing.

An unscientific survey of 30 recent, current or forthcoming Broadway musicals reveals that only 7 (including 'The Producers,' 'Wicked,' 'Spamalot' and 'The Color Purple') have an old-fashioned overture. Another seven have a musical prologue too brief to qualify or, like 'Chicago' and 'The Drowsy Chaperone,' place the overture after some initial dialogue, a handy way to keep audiences from talking through it. The remaining 16 -- from the long-running 'Rent' to the recent 'Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me' to this fall's 'Spring Awakening' -- have no overture at all, instead starting cold with a song or scene or high-concept opening number that establishes the evening's conceits rather than its melodic contours.

What happened?

For 'Fame Becomes Me,' which has 22 songs that could easily have been fashioned into a catchy opening medley, the decision was made by the clock. Scott Wittman, the show's director, co-lyricist and co-conceiver said, 'We wanted to get to the bar at Angus by 10.'

Audience stamina (and union work rules) can certainly make a four-minute overture seem a waste of precious time, but years ago it was almost required. From the modern musical's infancy in the 1920's through the so-called Golden Years in the 1940's and 1950's, audiences expected to sample a pu pu platter of great tunes, winningly arranged, as the lights dimmed from three-quarters to half and pink spotlights warmed the curtain. André Bishop, artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater, remembers listening intently to overtures when he attended musicals with his parents in that era -- he's now 56 -- and 'priding ourselves on spotting what would be the hit song from the show.' It didn't always take much detective work because, in those days, Broadway songs were often pop hits before the shows began.

That era is long gone, but there was always more to the overture than the pleasure of the music itself. Practically, it provided a buffer for latecomers; dramatically, it helped to effect a mood transition from the outer world of commerce and cabs to the imaginary world about to be created onstage. It might hint at crisp sophistication (those four bright exclamation points at the start of 'My Fair Lady') or exotic doings (the pentatonic Orientalia of 'The King and I') or the possibility of louche women (the wild trumpet orgy of 'Gypsy'). It could establish instantaneously the tone of the material, whether emotional ('South Pacific'), comical ('Bye Bye Birdie') or satirical ('Candide'). In the case of the overture to 'Candide,' that brilliant jack-in-the-box of musical surprises, it might do so better than the show itself.

But as musical theater grew away from operetta and aspired to be more like modern drama, and as its emphasis switched to storytelling instead of mere razzmatazz, the overture (which composers loved to write) began to seem out of place. For a few decades more sophisticated musicals occasionally finessed the matter with overtures that accompanied choreographed action, like Richard Rodgers's 'Carousel Waltz' and Frank Loesser's 'Runyonland' ballet at the start of 'Guys and Dolls.' By the mid-1970's, though, a theatrically daring show like 'A Chorus Line' could dispense with the overture altogether. Defying its name in 1975 'Pacific Overtures' had only a wee prelude.

The emergence in the 1980's of pop operas, like 'Cats' and 'Miss Saigon,' in which the songs were secondary to the brand, made stand-alone overtures seem even further off-message. (The brief musical sequence at the start of 'Les Misérables,' which reopens on Broadway next month, serves mostly to accompany the famous advertising emblem of the waif Cosette, projected on a scrim.) More recently even traditionally conceived, melody-stuffed shows like 'Hairspray' get straight to the action; its first song is preceded only by a 16-bar riff. 'The Wedding Singer' is even more impatient: the curtain rises with the cast already dancing.

It's partly a matter of the shows' pop roots. 'Rock 'n' roll melodies played by a Broadway pit band without the vocals will often sound cheesy,' said Marc Shaiman, the composer and co-lyricist of both 'Hairspray' and 'Fame Becomes Me.' Mr. Shaiman is one of the most tuneful of today's Broadway songwriters, but tunefulness, it seems, no longer justifies what's often seen as an indulgence. 'Because of the attention-span problem of the modern world,' he added, 'everyone just wants to get right into the story. Even movies now put the main title credits at the end. And then, let's be honest: you need Jule Styne-type melodies to really merit an overture. And a big enough band to play them. Why do an overture unless you've got xylophones going crazy?'

It's true: you wouldn't want to hear an overture played by a bunch of synthesizers. (It's bad enough hearing the songs accompanied that way.) The orchestrators who turned Styne's and Richard Rodgers's melodies into the pieces that dominate our straw poll of best-ever overtures (see sidebar) had enough strings to sell the ballads, enough brass for the showstoppers. To create the many different effects that make Rodgers's 'Carousel Waltz' a masterpiece of abstract storytelling -- eerie calliope sounds, nautical tub-thumping, huge romantic climaxes -- the orchestrator Don Walker in 1945 had 40 instrumentalists to play with. 'Fame Becomes Me' (not counting Mr. Shaiman onstage) has 8.

Smaller orchestras, lack of songfulness, shorter running times, all have contributed to the demise of the overture. But so have fundamental changes in the way audiences receive information. The set designer David Rockwell pointed out that, thanks to MTV, people now expect visuals with their music. For Mr. Bishop a related consideration is that overtures need curtains, and many Broadway shows, including 'The Light in the Piazza,' which he produced last year at Lincoln Center, no longer use them. As a result the full 'Piazza' overture was only played at the first few previews. 'It seemed silly listening to lovely, lush melodies for five minutes while staring at the half-lit set, waiting for something to happen,' Mr. Bishop explained. Thereafter, audiences heard an abbreviated version of the overture, while leaves and lights and actors animated the stage.

That 'waiting for something to happen' nails the problem. The traditional curtain-down, unstaged overture presupposed that music was already something happening, something capable, all by itself, of holding people's attention. That notion has been sorely tested in recent years. Producers and directors say they doubt the audience's ability to perceive useful information encoded in orchestral sound. Decoding that information depends on the habit of listening to music for its own inherent expressiveness, without words, pictures or action: a habit that disappeared from mainstream American culture along with the piano in the parlor. 'Avenue Q' acknowledges that change: its 'overture,' sung while a 'Sesame Street'-like animation plays on video screens, is a ditty reminiscent of theme songs from sitcoms like 'The Brady Bunch' and 'Gilligan's Island.'

Audiences in what Mr. Hamlisch calls 'click world' seem uncomfortable unless all channels are firing at once. But this discomfort may paradoxically make overtures even more necessary. The director Gary Griffin said that, like most new musicals, 'The Color Purple' started previews without an overture. At those performances, there was 'an uneasy feeling when the curtain went up,' Mr. Griffin noted. 'We'd had a focus group about the show, and people seemed to be troubled about how we were going to make this story' -- based on a disturbing epistolary novel -- 'into a musical. But when we played them a sampler version of some of the songs, they all of a sudden relaxed into the idea and were ready to accept it. And I thought maybe this is what we should do in the theater.'

When the 'Color Purple' overture was ready after three weeks of previews, the change in the audience was palpable, Mr. Griffin said. They seemed to understand how the music was going to function, and were prepared to listen to it for 'details and textures,' not just as a delivery system for words. 'It's subtle,' he added, 'but as orchestras dwindle in size, the more you put emphasis on their contribution, the better.'

So perhaps overtures can find a new purpose in helping to refamiliarize audiences with music as a form of storytelling. Call it a hair of the dog about to bite you. Certainly that's how the director Walter Bobbie hopes the overture to 'High Fidelity,' which opens on Broadway in December, will work. 'Ours is a show about how popular music influences romantic life,' he said. 'So I wanted to get the audience involved in that viscerally before presenting any words or ideas.' Apparently other directors and writers agree; in a probably short-lived mini-trend, two of the three new musicals expected in the spring ('The Pirate Queen' and 'Curtains') have overtures too.

At least they do as of now. But as Mr. Hamlisch could tell you, the best-made overtures oft times go astray. Sometimes even twice. His 'Chorus Line' opener, rearranged and retitled 'The Overture That Never Was,' was supposed to appear as a bonus track on the revival cast album, but has once again been cut. Still, Mr. Hamlisch, who was a protégé of Styne, didn't cry much over the loss. For one thing, the number can be heard on one of his Boston Pops recordings. And for another, he said, the overture as a genre may finally be too rich a treat to revive. 'It's like French sauce,' he explained. 'You enjoy it, but it ain't healthy.'

Hey, Leader, Strike Up the Band



Several dozen musical theater aficionados, asked to name their favorite overtures, came up with a list that includes the obvious and the obscure and some that don't really fit the category. ('The Carousel Waltz' and the Prologue to 'West Side Story,' for instance, are both performed with the curtain up and action unfolding.) Nevertheless, the results -shown here with the composer's name, the number of votes received and occasional voter commentary - are:

GYPSY: 12
Jule Styne
'And it's all downhill after that.'

CAROUSEL: 6
Richard Rodgers
'Creating an entire world before a word is spoken.'

CANDIDE: 5
Leonard Bernstein
'I get a Pavlovian urge to write a check to PBS.'

MY FAIR LADY: 4
Frederick Loewe
'I like those exclamation points at the start.'

SOUTH PACIFIC: 4
Richard Rodgers
'Some of the most sumptuous melodies ever heard.'

BYE BYE BIRDIE: 3
Charles Strouse
'A harp in a rock 'n' roll show?'

WEST SIDE STORY: 3
Leonard Bernstein
'Like getting a great thali in an Indian restaurant.'

ALL AMERICAN: 2
Charles Strouse
'I defy you to be in a bad mood at the end.'

FUNNY GIRL: 2
Jule Styne
'Nicky Arnstein! Nicky Arnstein!'

THE KING AND I: 2
Richard Rodgers

THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA: 2
Adam Guettel
'The definition of transporting.'

MACK & MABEL: 2
Jerry Herman

Receiving one vote each: '1776'; '42nd Street'; 'Annie'; 'Cabaret'; 'Do Re Mi'; 'Fade Out - Fade In'; 'Fiddler on the Roof'; 'Fiorello!'; 'The Full Monty'; 'Golden Rainbow'; 'Goldilocks'; 'Goodtime Charlie'; 'Happy Hunting'; 'Hazel Flagg'; 'Henry, Sweet Henry'; 'High Spirits'; 'A Little Night Music'; 'Nine'; 'On the Twentieth Century'; 'Pal Joey'; 'Plain and Fancy'; 'Promises, Promises'; 'The Sound of Music'; 'Subways Are for Sleeping'; 'Tenderloin.'

[ThankstoPhantom]

Posted: 10/13/06 at 9:49pm

Tommy Tune, to put it in a slightly blunt manner, speaks from his rear half the time. The shows he put on in his "day" were as uninteresting as a Virginia Woolf's novels read-a-thon. Sometimes I've heard him say "It'll never die," and other times he'll throw in the hooker line.

I will be the first to say, it has been going through some hard times artistically, but I'm noticing more risks being made lately (there may not be dozens, but there are a few, and that's a start).